Naomi, Detroit, 2000

from Chickfactor, July 2000

Chickfactor: You and damon seem to have the ideal artistic life -- all music, art, and literature. does the business side of it come naturally to you too?

Naomi: We feel lucky that we can do both things. But in terms of business anything coming to us naturally, the answer is no. I think of us as being kind of bad business people. But it’s like the music, we feel really great conviction about the work and the books. These are really important books and they’re meaningful books and they would be lost otherwise, so that sort of keeps us going. It’s a juggling act every month. It looks like we have these two jobs but we really have six jobs.

cf: Do you have a staff?

Naomi: We have one part-time assistant, as of the last year or so and he’s like us, he does everything. but mostly I do the design, and damon does all the editorial work, and marc, our assistant, fills in with a lot of the copyediting and all the stuff that the distributor asks us to do that we used to ignore he actually gets done and has really helped make us more professional.

cf: Were most of the books out of print here?

Naomi: Well, it ranges. For the most part the books are all experimental literature. they were in print in translation at some point but because of changes in the publishing industry big publishers no longer kept things that only sold a few thousand copies a year in print because it just wasn’t worth it to them. If it didn’t sell 20 or 30,000 copies, it would go out of print. so we’ve been able to license a lot of these books, which for a big company like random house is a joke, but if you’re a small company you can sell a few thousand copies.

cf: It seems like a natural thing to do coming out of independent music.

Naomi: Yes, absolutely. We started it back when we were in Galaxie 500 actually years and years ago [1990]. Back in the olden days. But we were there watching everyone start their own record labels. Shimmy-disc, Dischord. We didn’t really have any kind of vision about, oh, there are all these bands and we want to get their music out. But we knew there were all these books, especially Damon who was in Graduate School at the time, that he loved and that were great books he’d find in the libraries and he’d go to the bookstore and they’d be completely out of print and they would have been out of print for 30 years. And he’d be like, 'why is this book which is one of the most important books to French literature, completely unavailable in English?' so it was the same spirit that made us think 'we’ll just put them out ourselves.’

cf: Do you read french well?

Naomi: I can get by -- my French is not at all fabulous. Damon can read it but for the most part we don’t do any of the translating here. They’re old translations that we’re putting back into print or people have come to us with translations that they’ve done and said 'can you find a home for this?’

cf: Do you find that lots of the translations are radically different from each other?

Naomi: Yes. Also if they were done in different times they’re different too. It really makes a huge difference. There’s this whole thing about translation as an art in and of itself. you definitely find translators you like what they do who sort of take the work in one direction, and other translators like, 'how can they do this?’ We have this with Maldoror, this 19th-century French classic of creepiness, I mean, it’s just such a warped book. And there are other editions of it. I remember when we were doing ours, I knew the one from this English translator but I looked at another one and I was like, 'but it’s not at all creepy! it seems like this guy is normal and it’s not.’ It’s a very, very weird book.

cf: The writer would be pissed off if he could see the translation in some cases.

Naomi: Yeah, I can imagine, but I guess people must feel differently. it’s always going to go through a filter of someone else’s interpretation when it’s a translation but in a way it can also be a nice thing to have another layer on it.

cf: What’s your favorite font?

Naomi: Ooh. It’s like, “what’s your favorite child?”

cf: Is there one you return to?

Naomi: Well, I definitely go through phases. The font I’ve always loved is Futura, which is a classic font. I think I was predisposed to like that because both my parents were architects and they used to write in that perfectly square architecture writing and grew up with a lot of modernist furniture. I feel like a lot of my aesthetic was built around the tenets that Futura’s related to. I think that’s very comfortable; I feel like it’s always appropriate and it’s always beautiful. But I like a lot of the old book fonts like Bodoni and Didot and a lot of the newer fonts that are developed with a lot of the eccentricities, like I love Mrs. Eaves, the Emigre typeface. It’s funny. Fonts that I used to think it’s amazing how you change and ones that you think you would never use you find yourself using or ones that you used to use just seem horrifying. I did posters when I was in high school and I remember using all these Art Deco fonts and at the time I was like these are so cool, but now I look at those posters like “Oh my God! I used these really cheesy old fonts, so late ‘70s.”

cf: You went to architecture school.

Naomi: I did, and then I dropped out.

cf: Was it your parents’ influence?

Naomi: Definitely. a lot of people go to law school in the way I went to architecture school; their parents are like “Yes, you can do whatever you want but go to law school, that’s a good education for whatever you want to do.” My parents were like that. “Architecture is the mother of all the arts” they used to say. Do whatever you want but go to architecture school. I dropped out cause I was very unhappy doing it. I felt it was safer to drop out and be unable to work as an architect than get the degree and then I might actually have to do it.

cf: What’s the best city for architecture?

Naomi: I’ve gotten so much more easygoing about architecture since I left architecture; I think I was much more critical of everything. Now we can go by an ordinary building and I’ll be like “that’s okay” and Damon will be like “what!? You would never have said that before!” I’m just really relieved when things are not horribly, offensively, obnoxiously ugly or inhuman looking. So now these things that people do that are sort of compromised that are maybe not the most beautiful thing but they’re trying: it has windows, it’s made of real materials. But I don’t know, in the world I’d say Kyoto. We’ve been there twice now when we’ve gone to Japan to tour. And the thing I was always interested in when I was in architecture school is the relationship of architecture to the landscape. When I was in school there was a huge separation -- which I think has changed now -- there were the buildings and there was what was around the buildings and people didn’t mix. In Japanese architecture the relationship of the inside to the outside is sort of what I was trying to do when we built this garden, sort of an outdoor room. That’s what interests me most now. Where the things that people make can creep into everyday use and not just be monument or monument to the architect.

cf: Did you do visual art since you were a little kid?

Naomi: Yes. One of my first memories is being in art school at the Museum of Modern Art. My mother sent me there because my brother was going to be born and she knew I was going to have to go to school by myself so she wanted to get me used to going to school. I have this early memory of eating grapes with condensation on them and I had paint on my hands and I was watching the paint go on the grapes in my hands and eating them. I always thought of myself as a visual artist first and then for years when we were in Galaxie 500, I was like “why do all these people think I’m a musician?” in a way feeling like music is a valid thing took a long time cause I never thought of myself as doing that.

cf: You’ve had exhibitions of your work.

Naomi: Just one. I had a show of my paintings.

cf: what are your paintings like?

Naomi: Well, you can see them all, they’re all in the closet over there. They vary. I started in college, I was doing oil painting. Later on I was doing a lot more work with collage and photography. If you know our record 'The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi' those are photographs of paintings I was doing at the time. But recently I’ve been doing a lot more photography; I got very tired of the openness of painting. you can do whatever you want and you just have this big blank canvas and this space to do whatever. . . .

cf: and it’s never finished?

Naomi: No, it’s hard to start. I felt like I was always trying to use painting as a metaphor, I had some feelings to convey or some moment and I was trying to use what I was painting as a metaphor for this. I’ve always taken pictures and one day it occurred to me that if I just take the picture it’s not like going through this series of metaphors, it’s just it. So I’ve actually been enjoying doing that and skipping that layer of disguising things. The artwork on our new record, 'Damon & Naomi with Ghost' uses pictures I took in Kyoto, the most beautiful place on earth.

cf: You love it there.

Naomi: I do love it there. despite the fact that maybe I’ve become less critical about modern architecture, I feel very sensitive to the way things look. In kyoto, the ancient parts of it, it was such a relief. You never looked at anything that wasn’t beautiful or that wasn’t thought about. It wasn’t all pristinely beautiful but someone had thought about every aspect of something, which I just appreciate so much. It’s an enormous relief. I almost felt like to take pictures there was ridiculously easy because all the work had been done for you already.

cf: What do you take pictures of?

Naomi: Different things. I’ve been doing a series of self-portraits, which is a very strange thing to do. It’s amazing how you are the same subject but things change. I was thinking about self-portraiture and about how for centuries there was always the idea of the artist -- a man -- and the muse --usually the floaty woman -- and I was thinking with self-portraiture you become your own muse. It’s this kind of thing that we’re able to do now because we can have our own cameras and we can decide to take pictures of ourselves. I love the idea that you don’t have to turn to this other and put your aspirations -- it’s not like a man finding their aspirations using this woman as this instrument. You’re choosing to do it as yourself and you’re using yourself and drawing on your own experience or mood or emotion. But I like the idea of self as muse.

cf: What’s the best fan gift you’ve received?

Naomi: It makes me really happy when people say that the music means something to them.

cf: Whose lyrics do you adore?

Naomi: Well, I’ve always loved Ghost’s lyrics cause they’re in that Japanese interpretation of English where it’s not so straightforward but you know it has a meaning. Once, when we were on tour with Ghost, they did a song called “Sun is Tagging” which sometimes appears as “Sun is Tanging” and we were like “what does that mean?” and they’re like “you know, when you’re out in the desert and the sun’s overhead, it’s, like, tanging.” I was like “okay, well, that’s sort of what I thought it meant.” I love Sandy Denny, Nick Drake -- Damon would say Bob Dylan. I tend to like the singer-songwriters more than the bands. I never used to focus on the lyrics. I love Kendra Smith’s lyrics. Tom Rapp’s lyrics are great.

cf: is there part of the celebrity aspect of your music life that you’re not comfortable with?

Naomi: There’s not much of a celebrity aspect. There really isn’t. Sometimes I guess I wish there were more because I think our work gets lost. But we’ve made a lot of choices not to do things in certain ways. Some people get it, some people don’t but you make choices all along the way and we say no to a lot to things that we don’t believe in or things that we think will be humiliating or demeaning or; we’ve just chosen to do things in our own way and to be stubbornly self-reliant.

cf: Does the size of your audience matter?

Naomi: um, I don’t think it affects the work because I think we do it for other reasons but it certainly affects how easy or hard it is to practically keep making records, practically go on tour, emotionally feel like it means anything to anyone. I mean, it’s almost like, for us, each record, we don’t do so many anymore and not that often and we really throw ourselves into it. They’re really emotionally wrenching to do because we want to keep growing musically so each time we throw out the old formula, the way we figured out how to make a record, and start again. This time it was inviting musicians from Japan to collaborate with us. Last time it was figuring how to record ourselves. Each time it’s a tremendous struggle. I hear about people who play to really big rooms and it wasn’t enough people, and there are some people who can’t get anyone to listen to their music at all.

cf: What’s in your refrigerator?

Naomi: Middle eastern drained yogurt snack, poland spring water, we have some rosé wine which is something that damon favors in the summer, we have a chicken that we cooked on the barbecue. We’ve just discovered the joys of barbecueing, having grown up in New York City and having no idea about how to barbecue. We’re like, “Wow! We can be like the rest of America and have a barbecue!” Also, a lot of fruit.

cf: If your house was on fire and you could only take one item, what would you take?

Naomi: My cat, Baziotes. Named after an abstract expressionist painter, one of the less-famous ones, William Baziotes. He did beautiful paintings.

cf: What were you like in high school?

Naomi: I probably was the same. I was lucky I didn’t have to go to one of the high schools that value football players and cheerleaders. It was upper East side New York school so there was a lot of performing arts and theater and visual arts. I just did art and stuff. All my friends were punks. I almost went to see Joy Division when they were supposed to play in New York. I remember this friend of mine saying “come see them” and I listened to the record and I was like “No, I don’t like that.” and obviously the show was cancelled because Ian Curtis hung himself but years later I was like, oh my god, I’m so stupid to not have appreciated them then! Had they played I would have been kicking myself. I guess my musical taste has improved!

cf: What’s your favorite instrument?

Naomi: my bass. I feel very lucky to have found my bass. It seems to be the perfect sound for what I want to do.

cf: Who is the strangest person you’ve stayed with on tour?

Naomi: I might not remember their name cause it was years ago in Galaxie 500 and it was in Cincinnati and we were with Dave Rick who was driving with us and he had much more road experience. He found some guy, I don’t know if he was in the audience or worked at the club, and we stayed at his house. It was a warehouse with no windows. He proceeded to make us stay up all night and watch his cartoon collection cause he and dave rick were trying to one-up each other. At the time it was terrifying. I was like “where am I? How can I leave?” I felt trapped in this airless tomblike space.

cf: What fashion accessory would you like to see come back?

Naomi: I’d be happy if hot pants came back.

cf: Is there a style icon you admire?

Naomi: I love those older french women in their 50s or 60s or 40s, even, that are put together and proud and, whether or not they have any conflicts about their age, they’re still proud. I love pictures of Nico or Marlene Dietrich or the old, great women actresses. But day to day I admire older women who are proud and together and not discarded. It’s not like they’ve counted themselves out.